Notes from The Jungle Room

Next up: OSCON. Get there if you can — it’s starting today — and give them my regards because I can’t make it this year :-(

The new apartment has what is considered by my family a sort of study, but it’s quickly becoming the computer lab that I lost when I gave up my commercial space. That lab, of course, was dubbed “The Jungle Room,” after the man cave at Graceland. The study has been dubbed the same.

[Yes, if he had done nothing else, Elvis would have earned my respect and admiration for inventing the man cave decades before the concept existed on cable TV. Uhthankyouverymuch]

Before I continue, allow me a mea cupla: In my last item, I wrote about Openbox and referred to a “desktop” in the same paragraph. Technically, Openbox is a window manager, not a desktop environment, as I was so dutifully reminded by an astute commenter. True. However, when using the term “desktop,” I was actually referring to what one sees on their screen as opposed to a specific desktop environment — my bad for being unclear.

Nevertheless, as the last moving boxes are being punted out the door (Oh, I will take them down to the recycling bin shortly), I wanted to drop off in today’s blog a couple of items worth mentioning in FOSS news over the last few days, like . . . .

Mac hardware to get that shiny Chrome look? The VAR Guy drops an interesting hint in a column late yesterday outlining the proposition that Google’s Chrome OS has been compiled for the MacBook Air, thanks to a blogger/hacker named Hexxeh. “It’s a unique utopia, and one that won’t likely exist anytime soon,” he writes. “But the alleged smoothness in which the MacBook Air runs Chrome OS is worth watching.” Indeed, and the VAR Guy promises a review of Chrome OS in the near future. Watch that space.

Matt Hartley gives us the business: On a couple of rare occasions I’ve crossed proverbial swords with Matt Hartley, but for the most part his articles are informative and newsworthy. Special mention goes to yesterday’s Datamation item about choosing the right distro for your business. In the wrap-up, Matt writes that, “Everyone is going to have different needs. A company’s decision may range from weighing what type of support is needed down to selecting a community-based option over a highly specialized Linux distribution. With every example presented above, the common theme is that Linux offers plenty of choices.” Amen to that.

At ease, soldier: You find developers of Linux in the most interesting places; like, oh I don’t know, the U.S. Department of Defense, for example. The DOD brings us Lightweight Portable Security (LPS) Linux, which is a live CD focusing on privacy and security. It boots from a CD and executes from RAM, providing a browser, a file manager and some interesing tools. From the screenshots at Unixmen, it looks surprising like . . . Windows. Now if that’s not great camouflage, I don’t know what is. I haven’t tried it yet — I might soon — but if it runs off a CD and has all the tools I can use, it might replace the Ultimate Boot CD and Knoppix CD that I usually carry and often lose.

Last, but not least . . .

An extra chair at the dinner table: Until recently, Lubuntu was an independent project based on Ubuntu — Ubuntu with the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment, or LXDE for short. Starting with Ubuntu 11.10 in November, however, Lubuntu will join the Ubuntu family as an official variant, according to this article on the Liliputing site. Welcome to the family, Lubuntu.

This blog, and all other blogs by Larry the Free Software Guy and Larry Cafiero, are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND license. In short, this license allows others to download this work and share it with others as long as they credit me as the author, but others can’t change it in any way or use it commercially.

(Larry Cafiero is one of the founders of the Lindependence Project and has just started developing software in his new home office. Watch this space.)

Your jungle will be cool, unless the ladies in the house vote you out.

Matt H. ???? Not the expert I would pick to be in the booth
with me, but…. I remember when one would go to the store
to purchase a new computer. First question from the salesman
was always “What do you want to do with this computer.”
That was early days in the Apple vs Wintel machines. Today it is
moot point, any mid-range or above computer will do anything
you throw at it. Anything. If you are rich enough you can use ms
products and buy enough extra software to protect your investment. If you are even richer than that you can go with a Mac
machine, pretty safe and they look nice. Most folks could save a
bundle with a middle of the road machine and Linux. Linux means
you have more applications, stability, scalability, security and safety
(Larry gives points for alliteration) at a much better price point than
the other two choices. It is very easy for a business to out spend
the income, Open Source Tech is a way to save.

LPS Linux, w00t, Uncle Sam (well known tech guru) has this live
CD that .gov and .mil people are to use when accessing .gov or
.mil computers from off site. As soon as LtFSG posted about this gift from DC the Colonel (Ironic?) DLed and burned a coaster.
Very good Live CD, I got wireless and all the goodies needed to
compute. You get lots of encryption, SSH and other security stuff, I guess we all should be practicing that? But, can we trust our
people in Washington and at all those military bases all over the
world? Holy Knoppix Batman, the government is moving into the
present.

I have informed the CTO of this outfit about Lubuntu, as she has
tried over 10 distros in the last 36 hours what is one more?
You will be informed ASAP.

That was quick, Lubuntu would not even run from the Live CD!!!
The Dell mini 12 would not run the graphics. Ubuntu seems to be
using some new system for the graphics?

In all the playing around with these distros my wife likes #! the
best, but their GRUB is not compatible with the Dell.
Can anyone remaster the CD with a pre 1.98 GRUB or even
the newest GRUB 1.99? Too many hours spent on the work-a-
rounds with no success.

Dell did the Linux world a huge disservice when it put out
those mini 10’s and mini 12’s with Linux on them. Very strange hardware and an Ubuntu Remix that would not work like any Linux I ever saw. I bet Dell cost the Linux Community more people than
RMS.

My dear bride has tried many, more than many, different distros
on her mini 12. Lots of fail. Yesterday the last attempt was
Fusion Linux. Whats dat ya say? Fedora 14 Remix for those
wimpy netbooks. And how did it go? Everything worked. That
is the highest praise we can bestow on a distro.

So, the Mrs. is happy and that means the Colonel is happy.
Nancy even found a movie hidden in the install: Truth Happens”
Something from the boys and girls at Red Hat. Find it, watch it.
Next event where I am promoting Linux there will be one machine
just running that movie. Ten minutes or so, good stuff.